Monthly Archives: March 2019

Autism Awareness Month SUCKS.

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It’s ALMOST HERE GUYS, the time of the year I absolutely freakin’ hate. Did you know that Autism Speaks even has a whole guide of how to use their logo? (Unfortunately, it’s been taken off the internet and I can not find a cached version)

There’s mortgage companies running contests complete with puzzle pieces and artwork done by a non-autistic person.

It’s also the time of the year that my local car dealership puts up some heinous banner on the inside and outside of their building.

There’s also pretty crude donors, ignorant ambassadors, poorly thought out sponsorships and William Shatner’s gaslighting of Autistics on Twitter amongst all the things we already have to deal with.

Puzzle pieces are very harmful too.

Here’s what you can do instead:

Here are some pertinent links about why Autism Speaks & April is so bad:

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Seeking Member Submissions

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for the Made By Autistics Community! I am starting a website and may buy a domain name soon (if I can afford it!). I would love to feature more people.

https://madebyautistics.wordpress.com/members/

Join us on Facebook. The community page will have more information on how to submit.

The Crippling Severity Of Mental Illness

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I have always been very open about the mental illnesses I have dealt with for as long as I can remember. I’m not trying to plan a “pity party” or attract negative attention to myself. I’m just trying to find a way to decompress, even if it’s just temporary.

The tension in my chest feels like a bubble that you can’t pop. It sits in my chest, nestled right above my breasts in the centre. it’s below my neck. I am tense.

I can’t think very straight. Recently, I made a very abrupt, irrational decisions to approach a person from my past and said things I don’t mean. Just today I was working in a poor employment condition and I blamed it on myself. I quit the work I was doing because I started internalizing everything that was going on and felt that if I resigned, that was me taking the blame for what was going on and being responsible, even though what was happening was mostly beyond my control. I don’t feel very good. I also feel as though i’m lacking any intellectual value.

I wish I had the option of having an “away from keyboard” moment for my life. I just need the opportunity to disconnect and relax. I can’t seem to do that. The sound of a text message, the sick feeling I get when I anticipate a negative response through an email or even just how I feel when people are impolite towards me – it makes me physically ill. I’m talking about: blurred vision, profuse sweating, vision distortion, light sensitivity, a feeling of dizziness/wobbliness, nausea and headache. I used to cry a lot as a child. I had a reputation for it and looking back, it was my body’s coping and defense mechanism.

It emotionally hurts me when I try so hard to communicate and clarify things I am saying and the response I am met with is an eye roll. I already feel like just speaking and having to “think on the fly” is the worst way for me to get my thoughts out. Whether it’s in person or on the phone, my mind hits in to overdrive and I start flapping my lips. The thought process is skewed and the results are not always becoming.

I spend time at home, hanging out with my cats. I sleep a lot. I’m trying to do positive things that will make a difference, but the worry is always still there in the forefront of my mind. The obsessive tendencies I have, like checking/looking for things, thinking about misplaced items and other repetitive thoughts are worsening. The flashbacks of my traumatic youth interject themselves in things as simple as self-care routines, which is a detrimental setback. The fact I can’t take a bubble bath without these visions of being verbally abused is a really painful reminder that I still have so far to go. I am not hesitant to find a professional to help me through these things, I just don’t know where to start. It would be nice to have that chance without being reprimanded and grilled on all the things I discussed.

Even if I don’t have a visible wound, I am still badly hurting inside.

Made By Autistics!

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After being beaten down this week (see my last two posts) and feeling absolutely hellish, I wanted to do something good, something creative and something NICE!

I have found there to be a severe lack of opportunity for my Art locally and I can only imagine that other people have felt the same so I created the Made By Autistics Marketplace on facebook to give people the chance to sell their art, wares and other things they’ve created to anybody willing to join the group. I coined the phrase “By Autistic People For Everyone” to really outline what i’m going for.

I would love for you to join us at https://www.facebook.com/groups/MadeByAutistics/

Time for me to boycott.

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If I say I don’t want to be on the phone then please respect me.

I have been dealing with some of the worst customer service I think i’ve ever experienced in my life. I visited a popular shoe store that is geared towards youth with popular brands like Vans and Converse, to name a few.

It takes a lot out of me, energy-wise to even get out of bed, get ready, and leave the house. I decided to go to the mall – which I rarely do and it was a huge mistake.

I walked in to this store, the teenage sales associates were standing around, three of them, conversing. I actually had to interrupt their conversation to ask a question. No one wants to have to do that. It also was a Sunday and I was the only customer in the store. The last time I went to this mall and walked by this store, their sales associate was sitting on the cash table, legs dangling down towards the entrance. This should have been a red flag, but it wasn’t.

I wrote both their social media and their email and received form email responses. Nothing says “I don’t care about your patronage” by copying and pasting a pretty generic message – especially after spending the time to actually file a complaint and give them room to rectify the issue. From what i’ve read, it seems like their customer service, generally speaking, is pretty awful.

There was a few other issues, but i’ll spare you the details.

What really gets me from all these interactions is that someone from head office called me and our conversation went sour, fast:

  • Her: Hi this is __ at Journeys , who am I speaking to?
  • Me: It’s Margaux calling you back
  • Her: So I know you’ve spoken with Ryan, or social media team etc and i’m just not sure…(i can’t remember the rest)
  • Me: Yes. I don’t feel comfortable on the phone, can you email me?
  • Her: I’ll be short with it
  • Me: I’m on the Autism Spectrum, i’m really not comfortable on the phone, can you email me?
  • Her: I’m sorry, i’ll do that

Well, that email never came. I decided to contact the highest-up person I had been corresponding with through email and I was shocked at the response:

This was the response I received back

I was already visibly upset and after receiving this response I feel even worse now – but that’s not the first time they have refused to respect an Autistic Person:



I’ve also read cases of racial profiling, emails being ignored, product fulfillment gone wrong and a lot of customers vowing to never shop there again.

This makes me pose a pretty important question, If you are getting NEGATIVE feedback from Customers, wouldn’t you want to address them personally, rectify the issue, LEARN from it and improve? I don’t think it matters because their quarterly profits increased and in the end that’s all that is important to them.What you can do to help:

What you can do to help:

The unsavoury world of celebrity influence

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Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Celebrities – you know them. They can be kind, generous, and approachable. They can also be crude, negative and bigheaded. In this case, the latter applies.

Yesterday was an absolute firestorm on twitter and it all started with a joke: Someone posed the question of what they should wear when going to meet William Shatner. Someone else responded by saying “A Boycott Autism Speaks Shirt!”. William personally found this tweet and followed it up with the tweet you see here.

Victoria responded and Shatner viewed that as a threat – which is completely ironic due to the statement he made in the above tweet.

It also appears that this is not the first time he has become very hostile towards someone who was asking a very genuine question about their Autistic child.

I wonder where his publicist is and how his unprofessional behaviour has not reached the mainstream media. If you are going to attack a marginalized group of people, defend Autism Speaks and expect that the #ActuallyAutistic community is going to be quiet, you’ve got another thing coming. A lot of his fans are blindly following him and hanging on to his every word, without doing research on the subject. They are attacking us and creating an extremely stressful environment because of their perceived allyship to Mr. Shatner. I would only hope that asking for donations to ASAN would be welcomed, but sadly that is just not the case.